Hurricane Ian: One Year Later

2023 • HURRICANE IAN: ONE YEAR LATER • 11 adno=3903103-1 Visit Our Showroom at 150 Pond Cypress Road • Venice! 941-412-1883 • DoorDepotInc.com R e s ide ntial • Co mme rcial • L ice ns e d and Ins ure d • CGC1520837 Impact Windows and Entry Doors Impact Garage Doors Hurricane Shutters O v e r 60 Years C o m b i n e d E x p e r i e n c e THE AREA'S LEADER IN G ARAGE DOORS, HURRICANE PROTECTION, WINDOWS & ENTRY DOORS Thank you for Voting Us Best of Venice Again! 2022 2022 adno=3885146-1 Visit Our Showroom at 150 Pond Cypress Road • Venice! 941-412-1883 • DoorDepotInc.com R e s ide ntial • Co mme rcial • L ice ns e d and Ins ure d • CGC1520837 Impact Windows and Entry Doors Impact Garage Doors Hurricane Shutters O v e r 60 Years C o m b i n e d E x p e r i e n c e THE AREA'S LEADER IN G ARAGE DOORS, HURRICANE PROTECTION, WINDOWS & ENTRY DOORS Thank you for Voting Us Best of Venice Again! 2022 2022 adno=3885146-1 2022 2022 THE AREA'S LEADER IN GARAGE DOORS, HURRICANE PROTECTION, WINDOWS & ENTRY DOORS THE AREA'S LEADER IN G ARAGE DOORS, HURRICANE PROTECTION, WINDOWS & ENTRY DOORS Contractors bounce from supply, employee ISSUES AFTER STORM Elaine Allen-Emrich Staff Writer After Hurricane Ian hit the region, Absolute Aluminum had hundreds of phone calls and wrote thousands of dollars worth of new pool cage contracts. The Venice-based company's nine crews constructed about 15 pool cages a week. However, with all the work, the crews were back up for nearly 52 weeks. The need for employees was in high demand. It's better now, owner Dale DesJardins said. There's now about a seven-month wait for customers to replace a pool cage, he said. "The one thing we are always doing is hiring," he said. "We are always marketing for people. I hear other employers say that people don't want to work. I don't believe it. There there are several million from Tampa to Fort Myers and I need need about 120 employees. So I am always looking." The hurricane brought in 35% more work for the company compared to the previous year. "I've been in business for 34 years and have seen many, many storms," he said. "Amazingly, we didn't run into a ton of supply issues like we did in past hurricanes." DesJardins said something customers don't generally realize is that while a pool cage may look the same from 1988 to today, they are much different. Cages used to be built for a 90 mph wind load; now, they are built for 160 mph winds. "There's a big variance there. It's really specifi c to Florida, so a lot of people from up north never had a pool enclosure," he said. "So you may have some knowledge about a pool cage, but not a good knowledge of what the building code says. If someone has a pool cage from the 1990s, the wind load requirement was 110 mph. With the more intense hurricanes, the requirements changed." Just days after Hurricane Ian hit, Alex Bashkarev knew it was time to quit working for someone else and start his own seamless gutter, soffi t, pressure washing and pool and lanai screening business. "The calls just kept coming in, it was way too crazy," Bashkarev said. "I would fi nish one job at a house and that person would tell two other neighbors and they both would call me too. They wanted to know if I could fi t them in the schedule before the next storm?" Bashkarev is a North Port resident. "The problem when a hurricane hits, everyone runs out of materials and it's really bad for about the next four months, then it goes back to normal." Bashkarev drove to Georgia in November to get screening and supplies that he couldn't otherwise get locally before the storm. "The warehouses here were limiting how much we could get at one time," he said. "Before a storm, everyone (other businesses) were stocking up on screens. They would order a whole entire semi truck of screens." Now, Bashkarev is entering nearly a full year of work in the region. "Things are much more calmer now," he said. "People are still dealing with their insurance claims. I think it's going to be that way for a while. Business is steady." At the North Port Home Depot, the store had supplies before and after Hurricane Ian. It worked with area businesses to help customers after the storm. What the store lacked was the customer's ability to rent tools or heavy equipment to do their own repairs. It's a problem that plagued store manager Thomas Manning for years. CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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